A familiar motif permeates numerous 2025's blockbuster hits. It's an idea that goes back in time to the time of the Little Tramp. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the evil force is a envious, ruthless billionaire exploiting his vast wealth to defame Earth's superhero icon while orchestrating world events for his own profit. Within the dinosaur sequel *Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro spending tens of millions to throw the heroes into a dinosaur-packed arena for personal amusement. In Disney's *Zootopia 2*, the antagonists are a clan of extremely affluent lynxes who pilfered a kindly mom’s altruistic invention and framed her for murder, all for their financial benefit.
A Lineage of Film Class Warfare
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate portrays a affluent bad guy running a TV network that earns a fortune by exploiting and murdering people suffering through desperate poverty, while leveraging AI forgeries and a powerful media apparatus to portray them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* is less direct about economic inequality in such a blunt manner, but its antagonists live in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's disadvantaged inhabitants, forcing them out of jobs and toward imprisonment or servitude. *Ne Zha 2*, the year's top box-office hit, contrasts the scrappy inhabitants of a impoverished farm town against haughty aristocrats who inhabit extravagant sky-high mansions above the clouds. Even, the lighthearted farcical update *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's plan to trigger planetary doom — to make money, naturally.
There’s nothing particularly surprising in a run of movies presupposing that rich people have too much power, no morals or empathy, and a bottomless, entitled hunger for increased fortune. "Rich people are villains and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme dates back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures pitting his perpetually impoverished iconic vagrant against fat cats, industrialists, and clueless rich men. From the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" movies from that era to the 1980s dance movies that refreshed the exact same bit for the era of the greedy, harmful tech-bro villain, the complete chronicle of cinema is filled with "eat the rich" stories, which presume that wealth is at odds with fundamental decency, and exalt the neutralizing, routing, and sometimes destruction of the rich and powerful.
The Outlet That Fails to Transform
However, somehow, we never get around to taking down the wealthy. Whenever politicians follow a new mass shooting event by blaming violent video games, I sigh with frustration, because if people actually were that susceptible — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to make it seep the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society wouldn’t still idolize billionaires. But the headlines reveals regularly that a significant portion of Americans instinctively equate riches with intelligence and social worth, even after a century of cinema's biggest movies communicating a contradictory message.
In fact, it looks as though the constant stream of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a pressure release that gets in the way of meaningful change. Offered a frequent serving of mostly happily-ever-after fables where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are stripped of power and embarrassed, everyone can walk away content about right prevailing. These films are like cautionary fables, pretending that institutions function, and that resourceful individuals will identify any malicious actors among the mostly hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who lifted themselves by their bootstraps.
An Angrier Tone in 2025
Although 2025's movies do not break new ground in that respect, they certainly adhere to some contemporary patterns among anti-wealth stories: They’re getting angrier, more pointed, more specific, and apparently more lethal. It is seldom sufficient nowadays to see rich people learn a useful lesson in empathy, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or lose their money to the people they subjugated, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, greedy, hateful affluent villains were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a giant mutant dinosaur (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were obliterated on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and shot in the face at close range on national television (*The Running Man*). They were stabbed to death with a improvised weapon (*Companion*) and assaulted fatally by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the packed into a police car ending, likely due to it’s become so obvious that rich people live by their own legal rules, and are highly probable to purchase their freedom."
The "arrested and awaiting trial" outcome fails to deliver anymore. Instead, these villains are apt to die at the final act of their movies, often in especially horrific, fitting ways.
Notable Outliers
Some films diverge, certainly. Lex Luthor in *Superman* is simply humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Monstrous manipulator Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* finds himself confined to the digital realm, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* is stripped of all his money and is transformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are exposed as thieves and liars, but they don’t meet|avoid
